Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap

by Ben Westhoff Narrated by Jackson JD

Overview

"Raw, authoritative, and unflinching ... An elaborately detailed, darkly surprising, definitive history of the LA gangsta rap era." -- Kirkus, starred review

A monumental, revealing narrative history about the legendary group of artists at the forefront of West Coast hip-hop: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur.

Amid rising gang violence, the crack epidemic, and police brutality, a group of unlikely voices cut through the chaos of late 1980s Los Angeles: N.W.A. Led by a drug dealer, a glammed-up producer, and a high school kid, N.W.A gave voice to disenfranchised African Americans across the country. And they quickly redefined pop culture across the world. Their names remain as popular as ever -- Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and Ice Cube. Dre soon joined forces with Suge Knight to create the combustible Death Row Records, which in turn transformed Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur into superstars.

Ben Westhoff explores how this group of artists shifted the balance of hip-hop from New York to Los Angeles. He shows how N.W.A.'s shocking success lead to rivalries between members, record labels, and eventually a war between East Coast and West Coast factions. In the process, hip-hop burst into mainstream America at a time of immense social change, and became the most dominant musical movement of the last thirty years. At gangsta rap's peak, two of its biggest names -- Tupac and Biggie Smalls -- were murdered, leaving the surviving artists to forge peace before the genre annihilated itself.

Featuring extensive investigative reporting, interviews with the principal players, and dozens of never-before-told stories, Original Gangstas is a groundbreaking addition to the history of popular music.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

06/13/2016
In this sprawling history, journalist Westhoff (Dirty South) follows West Coast rap from the mean streets of Compton and south central Los Angeles to international prominence. Inspired by the first wave of hip-hop, artists such as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Easy E. drew upon the chaos of the crack era to both report on and glamorize thug life. This proved to be a winning formula, and by 1993, gangsta rap commanded the pop charts, encouraging teenage boys around the world to act hard and wear baggy jeans. Yet for the artists themselves, the intoxication of wealth and fame made it difficult to separate myth and reality—a blurring with deadly consequences. With so much territory to cover, Westhoff tends to sketch rather than illustrate. Later chapters on the East Coast–West Coast feud are both textured and vivid, but early chapters on the origins of NWA read like a Wikipedia bio. The compelling narration of Tupac Shakur’s conflicted life and death highlights the contradictions that devastated so many of the rappers; narrowing the book’s scope would have given Westhoff more opportunity to consistently reach this level of accomplishment. Despite some shortcomings, Westhoff’s impressive research makes this an invaluable overview of the musical influences and legal nightmares of West Coast rap’s main players, and his book will stand as a comprehensive guide to an inner-city movement that conquered the world. Agent: Bassoff, Ethan, Lippincott Massie McQuilkin. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

"I trust Ben Westhoff. I trust him to report a story and I trust him to tell a story, and that's exactly what he's done here in Original Gangstas. He's taken what's always felt like an almost impossibly knotted string of storylines and plot points in gangsta rap, the most turbulent version of the most popular music on the planet, and turned them into an airtight and unflinching book. Original Gangstas is as resolute as the people and ideas it sets out to profile, and that is no small feat."—Shea Serrano, New York Times bestselling author of The Rap Year Book

"Scrupulously researched with many incisive revelations, this may be the best book ever written about the hip hop world."—S. Leigh Savidge,Academy Award nominee and co-writer of Straight Outta Compton

"A provocative, multifaceted portrait of essential rap pioneers who ushered the hip-hop music scene to greatness.... As raw, authoritative, and unflinching as the music his narrative chronicles, Westhoff comprehensively uncovers the factual roots of the gangsta rap movement and admirably credits those whose footprints paved the way for the younger rappers emerging today.... An elaborately detailed, darkly surprising, definitive history of the LA gangsta rap era."—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"[Adds] fresh detail to the oft-told stories ...[A] history that won't settle for easy heroes or villains."—Rolling Stone

"Original Gangstas is as real as it gets if you want to know the so-called 'gangsta rap' scene. Ben Westhoff refrains from using rumors and innuendos, and instead reports the facts, and he tells all sides of this music movement. The book goes into depth about many stories I'd only previously heard via the streets. As the first DJ to play almost everyone mentioned in the book, I found Original Gangstas compelling reading. Thank you, Ben Westhoff, for this great book!"—Greg Mack, "The Godfather of Hip Hop Radio," former KDAY DJ, current host of the nationally syndicated "The Greg Mack Show"

"Invaluable... [Westhoff's] book will stand as a comprehensive guide to an inner-city movement that conquered the world."—Publishers Weekly

"Original Gangstas takes readers to the source, the battered communities and difficult lives that spawned an unlikely musical revolution. Eazy and Dre, Tupac and Snoop-Westhoff admires his subjects' music talent but isn't afraid to expose their darkest secrets. His research is exhaustive, while his prose is concise, and the result is an unforgettable history of the last time music was ever really dangerous."—Stephen Witt, author of How Music Got Free

"Original Gangstas shows how the rap West was won. A social and cultural study to read along with a head nodding-soundtrack 'fo sho.'"—Chuck D, Public Enemy

"Insightful... Westhoff's history is especially relevant amid the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement."—Booklist

"[A] captivating chronicle... Central to Westhoff's research are original interviews with key figures balanced with the author's efforts to frame the music as a piece with the surrounding social and political upheaval... He doesn't flinch in providing a rounded picture of the history of the genre, in which the danger wasn't confined to the music."—Library Journal

"Westhoff manages to knit together all the group's outsized personalities, feuds, fist fights and drama into a stunning and entertaining read.... [His] detailed recounting of the long history of Death Row is required reading even for those who may think they know the story."—New York Daily News

"This is the hip-hop book of the season, and it gives readers a thorough and engaging history of the West coast rap scene."—Bookish

"As eloquently written as it is immensely raw in content. To borrow one from Ice Cube, it's a 'no vaseline' sort of affair.... Original Gangstas reads like classic investigative magazine journalism and stands alongside Check the Technique, Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang, and The Big Payback by Dan Charnas as a standard-bearer sure to age like a Dre track.... A seriously compelling page-turner."—Chris Faraone, DigBoston

"Original Gangstas goes beneath the surface of West Coast rap's origin story."—Noisey, Vice.com

"Westhoff could have even trimmed his prose down to bullet points and the story still would have leapt off the page. The standard of the reporting is that high on its own.... The facts ... are messy but Westhoff arranges them with a humility and expertise uncommon in music writing.... If you are interested to know what actually happened during the rise of West Coast rap music, Original Gangstas is as close to the facts as you're going to get."—Alex Dwyer, Passionof the Weiss

"Meticulously researched and superbly written."—HipHopDX

"[Original Gangstas] delves deeply into the history of hip-hop on the West Coast, meticulously unearthing layer after layer of the true story not covered in other books or movies... An informative page-turner that sheds an unbiased light on the founding figures who created the gangsta rap genre."—Riverfront Times

"An incisive, rigorously reported history... Original Gangstas ... shines a light into every nook and cranny of the N.W.A story... Westhoff has a gumshoe's eye, a deadline writer's efficiency, and a novelist's sense of place and time."—Chicago Reader

"The book offers plenty of pleasures and surprises, giving an authoritative investigation of the familiar rivalries and controversies of gangsta rap, but also intimate scenes of intensely bright, sharp-witted young artists figuring out their form.... Westhoff constructs a political backdrop that highlights the importance of rap as an American art form... [A] highly readable and important history."—St. LouisPost-Dispatch

"Westhoff ... was never content to sit at his desk .... [His] kind of shoe-leather reporting ... is once again on glorious display in Original Gangstas, the culmination of five years of reporting."—Village Voice

Library Journal

08/01/2016
Westhoff (Dirty South) has written another captivating chronicle in his ongoing analysis of rap and hip-hop history. This work opens with the story of Eric White, in 1985 a 21-year-old drug pusher from Compton, CA, and on his way to a career as the renamed Eazy-E. From there it's a roller-coaster ride as Westoff introduces us to Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, Suge Knight, and a panoply of artists, players, and hangers-on in the gangsta rap scene. Central to Westhoff's research are original interviews with key figures balanced with the author's efforts to frame the music as a piece with the surrounding social and political upheaval of the time. Hip-hop may have arrived in the cultural mainstream, and it has certainly proved itself to be a huge financial success, but the process to make it so has included more than the usual amount of ambition, greed, destruction, and controversy. It's to the author's credit that he doesn't flinch in providing a rounded picture of the history of the genre, in which the danger wasn't confined to the music. VERDICT Westhoff's readable, firsthand narrative of the "defining music of a generation" will appeal to lovers of hip-hop and music history buffs.—Bill Baars, Lake Oswego P.L., OR

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2016-07-15
A provocative, multifaceted portrait of essential rap pioneers who ushered the hip-hop music scene to greatness.After covering Southern rap artists, former L.A. Weekly music editor Westhoff (Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop, 2011) profiles four key performers who had a vitally influential pull on the West Coast rap community in the 1980s and ’90s. His in-depth report begins with Eazy-E, a young, mentally sharp, womanizing Compton drug dealer who was as smooth-talking as fellow rapper Dr. Dre, whose success emerged after he joined the World Class Wreckin’ Cru and then N.W.A. to become a defiant “turntablist who knew what the crowd wanted but wasn’t always willing to play it.” Though Ice Cube’s early rhymes clearly disparaged gang activity, after his ascent up the rap ranks from N.W.A. to Da Lench Mob and a string of successful solo ventures, his career became fraught with tense rivalries, censorship, domestic violence, jealousy, and animosity among record labels like Death Row, Ruthless, and Bad Boy Entertainment. These problems also plagued the career of Tupac Shakur, whom Westhoff illustrates best and whom he considers “the fiercest West Coast rapper of all.” As the 1990s surged, so did the popularity of gangsta rap and the lure (and pitfalls) of an excessive, hedonistic lifestyle for its artists, who would go on to battle through the renowned East Coast–West Coast feud and many racially charged travesties of justice. As raw, authoritative, and unflinching as the music his narrative chronicles, Westhoff comprehensively uncovers the factual roots of the gangsta rap movement and admirably credits those whose footprints paved the way for the younger rappers emerging today. The author concludes with reminders of rap music’s cultural and anti-oppressive benefits—though its legacy of thuggery and violence resulted in the homicides of the Notorious B.I.G. and Shakur (the book’s release date coincides with the 20th anniversary of Shakur’s death). An elaborately detailed, darkly surprising, definitive history of the LA gangsta rap era.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173405975
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	09/13/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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